June 2024

We suspect that some competitors registered for the Great Vallejo Race saw the weather, hit the snooze alarm, and pulled their down comforters over their heads. The rest of us had a cold, wet romp of a sail in 10 to 21+ knots of southwesterly breeze, surfing the stacked waves whipped up in an ebb on San Pablo Bay.

Their story started where so many local stories do, at the Cal Sailing Club (CSC) in Berkeley, California. Marie had only sailed as a kid in her native France, while Yalcin had fallen in love with keelboats out on the beautiful southern coast of his native Turkey. When they both ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was only natural that the two gravitated toward sailing on the Bay.

More than 70 boats have signed up for this year's Pacific Cup, with the first starters, the doublehanders and smaller boats, leaving the Gate on July 15. It's an eclectic mix of boats that make the biennial leap from San Francisco to Kaneohe, Hawaii, and this year is no different.

Sailing across the Pacific Ocean on a Dutch clipper ship was not on my boating bucket list until I read about Stad Amsterdam's voyage from Panama to San Francisco in 'Lectronic Latitude

This column has appeared in the pages of Latitude 38 since early 1980, one article every month with very few exceptions. That's 44 x 12, or well over 500 columns.

A fast Newport to Ensenada Race, FLYC's Camellia Cup, StFYC's J/105 Women Skipper Invitational, SCYC's Moore 24 Santa Cruz Regatta, the SSS Sort of Singlehanded South Bay Race, DRYC's Malibu Race and the team roster of American sailors heading to the Paris Olympics.